I have a story to tell about flying below, but when I finished writing this post, I figured out what I wanted as the main takeaway. So it’s at the top; a little internal monologue – this is not a script for you to say to others. It’s an offer of what might be happening when you encounter someone trying to give you advice that makes your stomach drop.

I really appreciate that your advice is well intentioned and seems like a simple solution to my issue.
But it doesn’t really work in my own personal context.
But because I don’t want you to be annoyed with me, or label me difficult, which is what often happens when I try and say that a piece of advice won’t work for my context.
I will try and follow your advice anyway, even though I know, in my gut, it will not work.
And because over years, the person, the people who provided that advice, always explained to me that their advice didn’t work for me, because I didn’t implement it properly,
I have become very practiced at explaining why the advice didn’t work in a manner that blames myself,
and doesn’t upset you.
So that at the end of the experience, I have developed, or elaborated on, a list of all of my faults that will explain why I implemented your advice incorrectly.
Instead of focussing on following my goals and interests,
I now only focus on my personal failings, and how I need to improve them.
So that I don’t make you feel bad.
Or get labelled difficult.
Or get dismissed for overthinking things.

The meal is about to be served on our seven hour flight. In the month between taking my baby to visit relatives, and returning, she has outgrown what was previously a very snug bassinet on the plane.

She can sit in the bassinet, but her new favourite game is standing up, sentinal-like, on high things that aren’t really for standing on. The bassinet is a perfect candidate. She has matched this with not quite having learned the art of standing unsupported.

That’s okay, I think, when the meal comes, I’ll sit her on my lap. I’ll put the meal in the bassinet for a while to cool down from its lava-hot state so that she doesn’t enthusiastically burn herself and me. We will read one of the tiny books I’ve brought with me. Then I can eat from the half-folded tray table with on my lap. I’ve got this.

I sit down with her, and go to get out the tray table. Through an esoteric design decision that I will never understand, the tray tables in the bulk head of this specific plane (and apparently most) are designed to only lay flat if rammed tight against my size 16 stomach. Even without her, a little paunch still hangs over the place where my meal goes. It cannot even go flat when folded in half.

I stand up, put my baby on my seat, and lean against the bassinet. I have already been on a 12 hour flight before this one, with other forms of travel before that. Of course I am tired. I am hungry too – my baby is breastfeeding more, mostly for comfort, because it turns out that being on a plane, while weird for adults and young people, is at least an explainable phenomenon. To a baby, it’s just plain weird.

The flight attendant is looking put out that I am standing where she needs to start serving meals, including my one.

I can’t sit and eat it with her on my lap, because the tray table won’t fit us both, I say.

Well you can put her in the bassinet, she says.

The bassinet is for the baby, she further explains.

Yes, I know that, but she is awake, and the only way she will fit will be if she sits in it, but she keeps trying to stand up, which is unsafe. So I can’t do that, I patiently-ish respond.

You can strap her in to the bassinet, the flight attendant responds brightly.

There is criss cross webbing on the bassinet that works if you buckle it over the top of a baby that is lying down in order to stop them bouncing out during turbulence. The effect is kind of like the cargo boxes you see on the back of army carrier jets in action films. But on a baby.

I’ll show you how to operate the buckles if you just lie her down, the flight attendant says, more insistently, smiling even more broadly.

This person has not had a baby, I assume. Be patient with her, I think.

Automatically, the need to be patient with, and placate, someone who is acting like I have inconvenienced them has subconsciously prioritised itself over finding a solution to this issue, again. I grow more irritated with myself than her.

You can’t just make a toddler lie down, I snap.

The flight attendant’s feelings look hurt.

I am trying to work with you on a solution, so please be patient with me, she replies.

I smile. Apologise. Automatic. Often rehearsed.

I can bring you your meal later, she says. The statement doesn’t really fit into the problem solving vibe I’m trying to cultivate. This problem is not going to fix itself with time.

I also understand the desert landscape that can end up defining ‘doing something later’. Later does not exist.

At the same time, I know am on the verge of being labelled difficult.

To avoid this label, I will need to concede to whatever she wants to do, or I will need to explain myself really quickly.

But my brain won’t fire up. It’s tired. Because this is the third flight I have been on coming home. I have nailed down the organisational elements to baby travel that I can, but there are things out of my control, including the fact that my baby is a seperate human to me who wants and needs stuff, as well as fundamental flaws in the interior design of airplanes. And I just need the help of others to make my way through this, whether they understand why that need has come up in the first place or not.

But this concept, this conversation rhymes in so many ways with navigating life with unaddressed ADHD. And I’ll never be able to capture, in a single post, how the built up fatigue feels from a lifetime of not asking for help.

Even pre-baby, my internal monologue said, well, you wanted this job, you wanted this car, you wanted this doctor’s appointment, this ADHD diagnosis. You can’t complain about the ridiculous mental and administrative burden that goes with it. You have to fix this yourself.

But now, over a year in, there is the added layer, unthinkingly accepted in the discourse: you wanted this baby, so don’t you dare say you need help.

This is part of the decision fatigue, the asking for help fatigue, that comes from a lifetime of people pleasing and enthusiastic productivity.

For late diagnosed ADHDers, asking for help is naturally placed as an absolute last resort. This means that mental real estate is automatically spent racing through all possible solutions, decisions, and accompanying acrobatic:

If I get out of this queue I have been standing in with my baby for thirty minutes and put her on that chair over there and balance on one leg I might be able to stretch myself over to tie my shoelace.

If I put her on the floor for a sec so I can tie my shoelace but stay in the queue maybe only fifteen percent of the people in the queue will be horrified that I put my baby on a floor and I can just avoid their eye contact. And maybe, just maybe she won’t crawl over to that bread crust I can see and put it in her mouth, which I’m not heaps worried about, but everyone else definitely will be.

Hopefully, with work, at some point you think:

Or I could just turn to the person next to me, and say ‘Hey can you just hold my baby for a tick so I can tie my shoelace?’

To which they can quite reasonably say no. But most likely will say yes, because most people are decent.

Back to the lava meal stand off.

A woman pipes up behind the flight attendant.

I can entertain your baby while you eat if you would like? I’ll just eat mine first.

The flight attendant decides that this is a great idea for me.

When I accept this offer I crouch down, and I look at my baby, who has happily been waving to anyone who makes eye contact with her, and I start crying. From exhaustion, from embarrassment that I couldn’t figure out a solution in the moment, from frustration about the leaps and mechanics I had to put my tired brain through to try and think of a solution. From the fact that the idiot who did the interior design for this plane probably got an award.

And this was all so I could feed my body, so I could continue to function a little better on the flight.

Advice, and the fatigue of internal auditing

After a scenario like this, I’ve also thought afterwards about the ‘solutions’ that were offered. These solutions were said simply and like they were obvious, despite being wildly impractical. Solutions that my instinct knew would not work, but that I felt I needed to intellectually audit and then respectfully reject to spare the other person’s feelings.

But you just need to lie your baby down and put a giant strap over their body and face.

What percentage of the conversation with the flight attendant was taken up by my explaining why their seemingly simple solution, opinion, or advice, was completely inappropriate to the situation, and didn’t fit the context of what was happening.

You see, my baby has outgrown the potato phase, and so would probably become extremely distressed if I forced her into a cramped space and put webbing over the top of her body and face, rendering her trapped. Call it mother’s intuition.

What percentage of effort had gone to wondering if they knew better than me, then trying to make them feel good? I can’t be direct, or frustrated, because it will hurt the flight attendant’s feelings, and she has already told me she is trying to help me. And even though she has definitely not been helping me, she says she is, and I don’t want to burst that bubble. Also this is an airplane, I don’t want this to turn into an incident.

The script

Read the following script, which was also at the top of the post, and reflect on how often you feel you need to use it in your life. Consider how many exchanges you have with others that end up getting you sidetracked from their initial purpose because you get stuck in this loop:

I really appreciate that your advice is well intentioned and seems like a simple solution to my issue.
But it doesn’t really work in my own personal context.
But because I don’t want you to be annoyed with me, or label me difficult, which is what often happens when I try and say that a piece of advice won’t work for my context.
I will try and follow your advice anyway, even though I know, in my gut, it will not work.
And because over years, the person, the people who provided that advice, always explained to me that their advice didn’t work for me, because I didn’t implement it properly,
I have become very practiced at explaining why the advice didn’t work in a manner that blames myself,
and doesn’t upset you.
So that at the end of the experience, I have developed, or elaborated on, a list of all of my faults that will explain why I implemented your advice incorrectly.
Instead of focussing on following my goals and interests,
I now only focus on my personal failings, and how I need to improve them.
So that I don’t make you feel bad.
Or get labelled difficult.
Or get dismissed for overthinking things.

For Coaching, this is why bringing a topic to a session that is based on how someone else wants you to change, is going to be impossible to tackle.

We ADHDers are masters of rationalising and internalising what other people think of us, say about us, and tell us what we should do. As we grow up, often they don’t even need to say it anymore – we say it for them.

The reason we believe them? That’s a conversation for your therapist – but there could be many reasons. Repetition, empathy, assuming positive intent, stress, moral injury, patterns, trauma. No wonder we avoid asking for help half the time – the weight of the help offered could be so much heavier than you first think.

And on top of that if we see compassion, or self-compassion as woo, and vulnerability as weakness, then there’s the undoing of whatever part of your world that has made you believe that.

You are not imagining things, this cycle really does happen.

We are told we do not need to explain ourselves, but we do. We are told that we need to stop overthinking things, but we can’t. The need to calculate an itinerary of functioning exists, and we are living it. Saying we are going to stop doing any of this overnight contributes to the fiction that if we just enact a hack, we are going to become someone that we like, rather than working on liking the person we are now.

Listicles and hacks definitely have their place (although for cleaning most of the time the answer is bicarb soda and vinegar). But if you’re asking for genuine help, having solutions thrown at you that don’t fit and are difficult to follow through doesn’t sound like much fun for anyone.

And I’m even sorry to say, the blessed lady who offered to entertain my baby? She wasn’t very good at it. She panicked, poured options onto the 14 month old that were overwhelming and jaggedy. Sensing this panic made my baby panic – a rare occurrence. Luckily by then I had shovelled enough calories in to re-take the reins and sing Bonnie Tyler to them. And I was still so grateful to this random passenger, and would accept her help anytime. She held out her hand – and I took it, as I am still learning to do.

What to do?

This is one of those ones about it being a work in progress. Obviously I’m also still participating in this performance of ‘I know this advice isn’t going to work but I need to pretend it might to spare your feelings‘.

Part of that is a fantastic reflection of compassion for others, and being flexible and open to others. Of not being afraid of failure.

But when scenarios like these happen, maybe one of these three things can also resonate:

1 – Remembering that compassion isn’t a scarcity – I can keep having it for others, but I want to keep cultivating for myself. That others like being helpful as much as I do. That most people wish each other well, even if it comes out clumsy. That these ideas are allowed to sit next to the idea that some people don’t wish me well, or want me to be small, or stop being too much.

2 – Pausing, just for a moment. Sometimes my executive function is not online to stop the impulsivity, but again, there doesn’t have to be an elegant, opposite response to that. Most times, I practice a holding statement. I don’t need to answer this person immediately. They can wait. It’s your life. You can say, ‘Can I think about that for a bit?’.

3 – I ask myself, what is it about this person, and this advice, that is seductive to me? What about it has made me accept it, or need to take it on?

Understanding the pattern of how you ended up untrusting of your own solutions, is the start of you retrieving your confidence. Along with that optimism, that hopefulness in experimentation, that so often goes hand in hand with ADHD.